TWO INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPIES FOR V.G. ADMONI. Akmatova was one of the legendary figures of modern Russian poetry. Her life was one of great achievement and great loss. Her first husband, Nikolai Gumilev, was executed and her second husband, Nikolai Punin, died in the Gulag. She was one of her country's great lyric poets and she wrote first hand and movingly about Stalin's terror. She had many admirers and numerous lovers including the composer Artur Lurye and possibly the poets Aleksandr Blok and Osip Mandelshtam. Painters did her portrait; Modigliani had her pose for him in the nude. While fellow poets and artists adored her, she was spied on by the state and finally expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. She survived to become one of the century's most eloquent witnesses to the Soviet nightmare. V.G. Admoni [1909-1993] was a distinguished Soviet literary and linguistic scholar; and he and his wife were Akhmatova's dear friends. The first volume she has inscribed: "To dear Admoni although it's Akmatova. Jan 1st 1959 Leningrad." and she has corrected the text and three manuscript poems have been pasted to page 68, 76 and 94.The second work is inscribed on the half title page: "And this oneto them again. Amiably, Akhmatova. Oct 3 1965 Leningrad."

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